What a day! We held a great panel. A decent amount of people showed up and we had lots of fun. Big thanks to Miles and Sharon Schneiderman for helping me with the panel. Sharon altered her schedule just to help us out!
We gave away some awesome gift coins to Heroes and Villains comics. We were even asked to step in and do a second session after another group cancelled. A super day. Got to hang out with some friends I haven’t seen in forever, check out some amazing cosplay, and overall have a good time! I should be getting back to my regular blog stuff after tomorrow. Until then, enjoy a few pics from today. DFTBA
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Still on the road. I just arrived in Tucson, Az. Tomorrow’s the big day for my first ever panel. Just picked up the prize for winning our Surprise Party panel and I want to give a shout out to Heroes and Villains comic shop here in Tucson. Their store is awesome and I am legitimately headed there after the Cub. They were kind enough to donate this awesome bag of goodies. I’m really excited to see my old friend and mess around in Tucson. I lived here years ago and so much has changed, but you know what’s still here? My favorite video store! Casa Video is still here, renting an amazing amount of movies and still giving out free popcorn! Jeez, I should shill for these people. Seriously, though, it’s a blast being back here, but the real fun starts tomorrow.
Con-Nichiwa, here I come! DFTBA Hey guys! I’m on the road to Con-Nichiwa, so expect the posts to be a little shorter until I’m back home. It’s really fun so far. We’re visiting a good friend today and then heading onward to meet up with Miles and Claire from Smash Fiction. But that’s not what today is about. Today I’m sharing more music that I listen to while I write, so let’s get down to it. Now, today’s song might be a little different, and that’s because I don’t have my notes with me out here so I can’t double check that I haven’t shared it, already. So I’m sharing something I’m confident I haven’t shared before. Today I give you Hovering Sombrero by They Might Be Giants. Honestly, I love this group and this song, well, um, it’s definitely one of theirs. I can’t point to a specific scene this song inspired, but it’s good for the wacky stuff going on in the background of The Paladin. Also, think of this song like a homework assignment. Why is there a hovering sombrero? What is the relationship between the man singing and the sombrero? How long has he known the sombrero? DFTBA We're just a few days away from Con-Nichiwa and my first time hosting a panel at a convention. I'm super excited and since it's really on my mind right now, I thought I'd share a few more tidbits about myself and being up in front of people.
Now, this may come as a surprise, but I don't really consider myself an extrovert. I like to think that an extroverts like being out amongst people, interacting and conversing. I... I don't like that. I dread having to make a phone call to someone I don' t know. Forget having to return an item or argue something to a sales clerk. I'll deal with the mistake. And yet, I can't help wanting to perform. I was a drama kid through all my primary education. I don't remember every playing dumb parts like "The Leaf" or "A Tree." I had real parts in real plays. Lincoln, Marc Antony. Real plays like Arsenic and Old Lace. I loved it! I remember being in grade school, probably around third grade or so, and I was asked to do the morning announcements. Now, it was probably bravado for the other kids that were in the room with me, but I told them "I have to pretend there's an audience of people watching or I can't do the announcements." Third grade Matias was kind of a turd. This attitude, combined with my love of wrestling, led to an explosive moment in my life that probably was the main catalyst in my actually becoming a wrestler. I performing in the high school talent show. Thrice. I became a legend, something that everyone was expecting each time. I became, Dude Love. Now, a quick internet search will tell you Dude Love was a wrestler persona adopted by Mick Foley first, as a high schooler, then again as a wrestler in WWF/E, but I gave the character new life. I danced. I brought people on stage and taught them to do the Charleston. I fought off "villains." I have an amazing time and became the hit of the school. And still, I didn't consider myself an extrovert. This is starting to get a little long winded, but that was the basics of it. Of course later I became El Zitro and held the KAW title, cutting scathing, unintelligible promos in front of crowds across campus and beyond. I hosted an entertainment news segment for my university news station, and even hopped on the desk as anchor more than a few times. Now, once again, I'm finding an audience. I need to perform. I need to tell a story. That's what my writing is all about. This just has a more immediate feedback. Remember, you can check me out at Con-Nichiwa THIS FRIDAY at the Tucson Convention Center. Don't Forget to be Awesome! Guess who's going to Con-Nichiwa in four days? And also is hosting a panel? And has two thumbs? Wait... this isn't how this joke goes, is it? Well, point is, I'm hosting a freakin' panel and I'm so excited for it!
So, I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to be doing a little venture with a couple of my friends from the Smash Fiction Podcast. They have a side deal they do called Smash Meta Fiction, in which they try out some other formats and games, one of which is... Surprise Party. For those who haven't been paying attention the game goes thusly. Three contestants will build a party of fictional character to replace the main group in a group-centric work of fiction. Their first one was Lord of the Rings and just this past Sunday they put out a second one based around Star Wars: A New Hope. I did something kinda fun today. See, I've been trying to figure out the backstory to a few of my tertiary and secondary characters. It's not necessarily important that the reader know about them right now, but I need to know so that I can have the characters act appropriately.
Now when I world build, I like to break things down logically. If I have a village in a fantasy story, I need to know how it came to be. What are the natural resources? Why did the village form in the first place? We can make some inferences if we look at a map. Where two or more roads converge, there's going to be travelers. With enough travelers, we can expect an inn to set up. With the inn is going to come houses for the workers and the stables. Once people start setting up there, it only makes sense a small market might form from a trader that decides not to keep moving. Then you need a farm to produce food for these people. Oh! And of course a church is going to set up shop to help the travelers with blessings and convert those from foreign lands. If you look at the map, you can build a city just based on logical assumptions. So what I did today was take a character and do the same thing. I have one girl named Juliet Bellamy. She's an anti-demon specialist, very peppy, and has a shock of blue hair in her otherwise normal hair. Just based on her personality, the way she interacts with her comrades, her looks, and other things I've written about her, I can work backwards and come up with a history that leads to the woman we have before us. It was actually REALLY fun! Wanna a give it a try? Take one of your characters? Don't have one? Grab a fictional character who's backstory isn't expounded upon from your favorite show or comic or whatever. Now look at them. Based on their appearance, what can you deduce? With Juliet, I can say that a woman, young, with a bubbly attitude and a blue stripe in her hair can lead to a few assumptions. It's doubtful her taste in music was centered around music like gospel or country. If she's outgoing now, she was probably outgoing in high school. Athletic? Questionable. Drama geek? Quite likely. Bit by bit you can make these wonderful assumptions, these deductions, and build your character's backstory. Once you have a backstory, you can keep things consistent with their character. It's fantastic! Give it a try! Until then, be excellent to each other! After speaking with some people, first and foremost my lovely wife, I've been assured that I need to work on one thing above the rest. Not fixing the POV in my story. Not even worrying about which characters will get the limelight and which will potentially get deleted. I need to learn to look at my story from my reader's point of view.
I can't believe that after all this time, pontificating about different ways to improve my work to you guys, listening to podcasts on writing, watching YouTube videos for tips on voice, I didn't consider the most important view point of all, the reader. I know my work. I know my characters. I know my world. I know it all WAY too well. So when I started panicking yesterday about Patricia, it was because I was looking at it with all the cards face up on the table. My reader, however, has no idea what's going on behind the scenes. It's true: I need to work out Patricia's backstory a bit more, especially if I want to give her any attention in a supplementary work. Right now though, she doesn't need to be deleted. She doesn't significantly add or detract from the story right now, at least from the reader's point of view. Cutting her out won't necessarily hurt the story, but it also won't help. I know I need to cut a bunch of words right now, but her parts are a spit in the ocean. Even removing her entirely from the manuscript will likely save me less than a thousand words, and right now, I need around 30,000. I need to look at the bigger picture and find entire scenes and chapters that can be lost. So, at least for now, Patricia is saved. And I've been taught a valuable lesson about remembering what the reader sees is not what I see. DFTBA, my dudes. My story has a lot of characters in it. One of the big problems I'm facing is that the bulk of them enter the story AFTER the mid-point. That doesn't leave me a lot of time to give each one enough exposure to the reader. I'm facing a real stickler here. She's a character I really like named Patricia Armstrong.
Now, if you follow the Five-Man Band formula (not to the T) you can extract roles for people within the narrative. Now, of course, I've set up the roles the characters all play within their respective groups. Their rank, their specialty, their history in most cases, but this character, Patricia, seems to have trouble fitting in. There is a second group in The Paladin with whom Jonathan meets up. They have significantly more members than his group, something which, logically, makes sense within the world. You wouldn't expect a police department to be run with three officers, right (Unless you're in Gaines Township, MI)? So logically, the group has a proper amount of people. For the narrative, however, there's just one or two too many to properly expound upon and the person most likely to get the ax is Patricia. Let's examine her: She's around 5'10, very physically fit, is a strong striker, and specializes in fighting "freaks," the in world term for vampires, werewolves, and creatures of that nature. She even knows some interesting techniques for playing with spiritual energy that none of her comrades use. But from a narrative perspective, she doesn't fulfill a particular role. In the Five-Man Band, you typically have The Leader (Jeremiah,) The Lancer (Samantha,) The Smart One (Ashley,) and The Chick / The Heart (Juliet.) This leaves me with three more paladins, but only one more basic role: The Big Guy. At first glance, she's a shoo-in, but there's also another person who could just as easily fill the role AND has more personality. Luis Rodriguez. He's anti-freak, he's a former boxer, he's Puerto Rican, and he's a classic television buff. He's fun. My beta readers seem to remember him much better than Patricia. Okay, so I keep Luis and Patricia is extra. No big deal, right? That's where Zack comes in. Zackary Minx, for no particular reason, seems to stand out to my readers. I honestly don't know what it is. He's kind of a slacker, he's technically a spiritualist, but his parish doesn't ever acknowledge it, and beyond that, he's pretty forgetable, to me anyway. The readers seem to attach to him, though. I think it might be because I've paired him up with Luis so often. It's always Zack and Luis. I wonder if Patricia not having a real friend, a companion to compliment her, is what makes her fade in my beta readers... Obviously, I can keep her around. There's no reason to force her out, but a good author doesn't waste words. Sometimes you have to combine two characters. Sometimes you have just plain delete one. But... I don't wanna! I like Patricia. I'm looking at adding more to her character, but everyone else's quirks have come naturally. Trying to assign stuff to Patrica randomly has felt forced. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I promise I will figure it out. Word count absolutely has to go down and, if things get hairy, she might have to go. But I'm not deleting her without a fight. I will figure out this problem with Patricia. DFTBA I may have written about this before, but it's becoming more and more relevant as I get through my current edit. You see, in my first go through (I won't say draft, because it had been written a few times over by this point) the story very much focused on multiple points of view. Jonathan, being the main character, of course had a lot of time, but so did Reagan, Giz, and a few others. There were plenty of scenes where Jonathan wasn't present and the narrative was completely focused on what these other characters were doing.
Things are slightly different now. I've rewritten, basically, the entire first half of the novel to give more time to Jonathan and cut out a lot of the slower parts. There were entire chapters where nothing of importance happened, so I needed to trim the fat. In the end, I've opened up Jonathan's character a bit more. This makes sense, because when I started writing I didn't really know who Jonathan was. He was watching most of the plot unfold around him. My next draft got him more involved in his own fate and helped me get a feel for who he was as a person, but he was still pretty passive in the beginning. That's been rectified, but the unforeseen consequence has been that we don't see from the point of view of another character until almost the halfway point of the novel. I suppose that can be justified, but I still find it problematic. I'm running it by some beta readers to see if the shift is too jarring right now and, if it is, I'll have to do more rewrites. I considered just removing these extra point of views and telling everything from Jonathan's perspective, but he's new to the world of paladins. He doesn't understand what's going on and a lot is being hidden from him. I feel it's not only important, but necessary for other character to handle some of this burden. So that's where I sit right now. It's still a big game of connect the dots, but I'm constantly erasing old dots and drawing in new ones. Hopefully that picture of the cat on the cover doesn't end up looking like a deformed mushroom. Don't Forget To Be Awesome! Occasionally when writing, I need a song that exudes epicness in such amounts as to be absolutely ridiculous. Yes. Occasionally I need a song that is ridiculously epic. And if there is any artist to whom the term "Ridiculously Epic" may be freely applied, it is clearly Aurelio Voltaire. So for today, I'm sharing what is arguably Voltaire's most epic song, Riding a Black Unicorn. If you, for some strange reason, read all of my blog but don't click on the videos for these playlist entries, allow me to recite the titular line from the song. Ahem... "For tonight I'm riding a black unicorn down the side of an erupting volcano. And I drink, drink, drink from a chalice filled with the laughter of small children." This is usually where I explain what I play this to elicit. It's where I tell you "yeah, this makes me think about sneaking around in the dark," or " this makes me feel quiet and somber." If that line up there didn't explain everything you need to know about this song, I'm not sure I can do anything else. This song is awesome, and I mean that in the classic sense of the word. Not like, "hey, this hot dog is awesome." No, like "Wow... watching the Earth rise over the horizon of the moon from within my space suit and seeing how little all our petty squabbles mean in the grand scheme of things is quite awesome." That is what this song embodies. So, please enjoy Voltaire's Riding A Black Unicorn. Don't Forget to be Awesome. |
Matias TautimezKeep your eyes open for my debut novel, The Paladin. Archives
January 2023
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